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Guy Tal

Professional photographic artist, author and speaker working primarily in the Western US. Website

A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened. ~Albert Camus

It’s a cold and quiet winter morning in a remote part of the Utah canyon country. From my base camp atop a high ridge separating two large canyons, I can see at least fifty miles in nearly all directions. About twenty miles to the east, sheer cliffs mark the edge of a snow-covered high plateau. There are no traces of humanity as far as I can see, other than my own belongings and a small section of the rough two-track dirt road I drove in on.

~~~

As a child, I was fascinated by tales of exploration and adventure, of wild lands, and of fantastic animals.

If I could send a message to my younger self—to the quiet boy who loved to roam alone in fields, when there were still fields; to the lonely and confused teenager who never fit in; to the young soldier at odds with his conscience and at a loss for hope—how would I have felt then to know that someday I’ll have my own tales of wildness and discovery and adventure? What would it have felt like to know that someday I’ll explore, photograph, and write about this vast and magnificent, and largely unexplored, desert, thousands of miles away from my birthplace, as my full-time job?

I urge you now, as you read, to consider this question: if you could give your younger self just one bit of advice (other than stock tips, dating advice, or lottery numbers), what would it be? I’ll offer my own at the end.